Monthly Archives: October 2011

Publisher’s Note: I spent my entire adult life until 2003 in the military. The last half of my career was saturated by doubt and philosophical dissonance mixed with the moral cowardice of failing to simply resign. Soldiering was what I knew. The incomparable Fred Reed writes in a few words what many feel but cannot articulate. Much like cops are the enabling arm of the state, the military is the muse through which politicians can mouth platitudes while having murderous works conducted in their name. When folks discover I am a veteran, they rarely hesitate to thank me for their freedom to which I have to laugh and heap scorn on their misdirected goodwill. You would be hard-pressed to find any conflict America has participated in that did not make the world safer for bigger government…anywhere or anytime. -BB

I read frequently among the lesserly neuronal of the supposed honor of soldiers, of the military virtues of courage, loyalty, and uprightness–that in an age of moral decomposition only the military adhere to principles, and that our troops in places like Afghanistan nobly make sacrifices to preserve our freedoms and democracy. Is not all of this nonsense?

Honor? A soldier is just a nationally certified hit-man, perfectly amoral. When he joins the military he agrees to kill anyone he is told to kill, regardless of whether he has previously heard of the country in which he will kill them or whether the residents pose any threat to him or his. How is this honorable? It is cause for lifelong shame.

It is curious that so many soldiers think that they are Christians. Christianity is incompatible with military service, if any Christianity is meant that Christ would have regarded with other than repugnance.

The explanation of course lies in the soldier’s moral compartmentation. Within his own tribe or pack, these usually being denominated “countries,” he is the soul of moral propriety—doesn’t knock over convenience stores, kick his dog, or beat his children; speaks courteously, observes personal hygiene, and works tirelessly for the public good in the event of natural disasters. A steely gaze with little behind it and a firm handshake amplify the appearance of probity.

In conflict with foreigners, he will burn, bomb, rape and torture indiscriminately. His is the behavior of feral dogs, which humans closely resemble.

Sacrifice? GIs do not make sacrifices. They are sacrificed, sacrificed for big egos, big contracts, for the shareholders of military industries, for pasty patriots in salons who never wore boots. They fight not for love of country but to stay alive, and from fear of the punishments meted out to deserters. If you doubt this, tell the men in Afghanistan that they may come home on the next plane without penalty, and see how many stay. Troops are as manipulated as roosters in a cock fight, forced to choose between combat and the pot.

The picture above is probably the most powerful picture I have seen in a long time. As my mind dissected this picture, I had a thousand thoughts, and not one word. I had read the caption under the picture so I knew this young man’s name was Scott Olsen. I know he is a 24 year old Marine Veteran, and he had served two tours in Iraq.
This man is laying bleeding from his head in the arms of people he has probably never met. He has part of his military uniform on, perhaps a uniform he was issued. It looks like he has some kind of military pack on. The pack is splattered with blood, and his hair is matted into the blood on his forehead. This Marine is badly in need of medical attention. As this young man lay horizontally in the arms of strangers, his unbuttoned camouflage blouse had draped to either side of him. Under that blouse was a black undershirt with a white dove pictured on it. I stopped and focused on that dove for a minute. The photographer had managed to place it almost directly in the middle of the picture. My eyes were stuck on that dove as I wondered what events had taken place in his life that drove him to be an advocate for peace. Words can not accurately describe the power of this picture, so I won’t even try. If it was up to me, one of these pictures would be handed out to every returning soldier with these two words, “welcome home.”

All of these thoughts quickly disappeared when I thought to myself, why is this man not on a stretcher? Why is this man being cared for in this manner? Why is he being carried around like this?

That young man was in a war zone. Many things have been said about the OWS protesters, and they have been called many names. I’d like to add one more name to the protesters who got this young Marine the hell out of there: Heroes.
It’s not everyday that your average American works up the courage to run into a situation where flash-bang grenades are being used; where tear gas canisters pop all around them; where they are being fired upon with rubber bullets and bean bags by those who have sworn to protect them. To watch that video is to witness bravery in action. I do not want to give commentary on the video, because like the picture above, it speaks for itself. Please take notice of the flash-bang grenade that is thrown by a member of law enforcement into the crowd of courageous folks who went back into harm’s way to try and rescue this man.

One word came to my mind when I watched that video: chaos. Chaos caused by jack booted thugs under the authority of the state. Chaos is the reason most folks I talk to reject the stateless society. They are unable to see that it is the state that causes chaos. Authority without accountability is chaos. It’s always the same excuse, chaos will ensue if we have no government. To those who would say this, I would ask this question; what the hell do we have now? It sure ain’t order.

If there is one thing the OWS movement has been good at it’s pointing out the real occupation force in this country: American Law Enforcement.

Editor’s note: Chris has a sense of serendipity, and has supplied another insightful essay while Bill and I are occupied at Libertopia. If you’d like to contribute an essay, please email them to kaiserleib@gmail.com. We may edit your essay for mechanics, but never for content. -KL

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
~Frederick Douglass

This essay is a follow-up to my last essay that was posted here at ZeroGov. I don’t think I properly got my point across, and I do not want to appear as a man who does not take freedom seriously enough to take the time to explain how it would work. Please allow me this opportunity to explain myself a little further.

I have read many books, essays, and such explaining how the people will have to be shown concrete alternatives to the state apparatus before they have the courage to abandon it. They will have to be shown how they would travel, and not just traveling by automobile, an explanation has to be given for air travel and air traffic control also. They need to be explained how they would receive justice in a free society, or shown examples of how justice has been handled in the past and present absent the state. Certainly the problem of pollution cannot be left up in the air when trying to explain why a free society would be better. These are only a few problems that exist now, and will undoubtedly exist in a voluntary society. Somehow we will have to show working alternatives to every one of these problems before the people throw off the shackles they have placed upon themselves. And this is the reason why we will fail at this monumental task of trying to explain freedom, although our minds are free, our bodies are not. We can build in our heads, but we lack the right to build with our hands.

The abolitionists of the past did not know of companies like, John Deere, Kubota, or International Harvester. They would never witness the invention of the tractor and all of the wonderful implements that can be attached to them that make life on a farm so much easier. They would never witness the fabulous invention known as the internal combustion engine, or the introduction of hydraulic systems that make all of this technology possible. They were not concerned with any of this, they did not care about what would replace the slave; they only fought to end the horrible institution of chattel slavery. This is the root I was trying to strike with my last essay. I only wish to abolish slavery. I see something as wrong, I should not have to devise a working model as an alternative to this wretched practice. Is it not enough to expose the slavery in the system to get my fellow humans to throw off their shackles? Do I have to tempt them with new systems? Chattel slavery, although practiced for many, many centuries, is now seen as a horribly immoral institution. Slave owners of the past were not presented with cost benefit analysis, or return on investment sheets. The moral argument was presented, and it was supported with the fact that man is a self-owner, no matter the color of his skin.

When comparing slavery and the state, some may think it’s a bit over the top, or is meant to invoke emotion. I assure you that the comparison is accurate and correct. To be a self-owner, one needs to believe in self-ownership. If one believes in ownership, then one also believes in possession. Let me give you an example: let’s say you find someone’s keys in a parking lot, and you pick them up. At this time, you are in possession of the keys, but they are not yours. The owner comes along and makes a claim on his property; he can stake an ownership claim. You being the good and helpful person you are gladly hand this man his keys, because he is the true and rightful owner. Let’s turn the tables, you have lost your keys, and you find a man in possession of them in a parking lot. As you approach this man you give him your gratitude for finding the lost set of keys, but instead the man runs away. He runs because he understands that you are the rightful owner, and he is merely in possession of the keys. It is not his property and he knows it. He is the wrongful owner.

Humans understand this concept with just about all property, except for their own bodies, and more specifically their labor. This principle also, and most importantly, applies to your body. Either you own it, or you are only in possession of it, and someone else can make an ownership claim on it. The law of the excluded middle works for ownership. Your labor would not exist without you, so it is only logical that it is yours. Either you own yourself and therefore your labor, or you don’t. There is no middle ground here. The difference between chattel slaves and 21st century slaves can be measured in degrees. Just as slave owners staked ownership claims on their slaves, the government stakes an ownership claim on you. The two masters are exactly the same in the fact that both wish to only extract your labor, the state just found a more efficient way of doing it. By claiming ownership of your labor the state has staked an ownership claim on to your own body.

Let’s go back to the guy running off with your keys. He now has to be on the look out because he is afraid that you will come looking to collect your property and violence may ensue. He still knows that he is only in possession of them and he is not the rightful owner. If you catch him, you will not accept only one key, or two keys, no you want the whole ring of keys, they are yours. The only way this man can keep your keys is through force, or the threat of force. He can pull out a gun to try and defend his possession, but the reason he has to pull the gun in the first place is because he is not the owner. This is the exact reason why the state has to employ the use of force to extract your property, they are not the rightful owners of it. The only rightful way property can be exchanged is through voluntary interaction; this is the only true way ownership can be transferred. Just as the chattel slave owners used shackles and chains, the state uses the same thing, but they have tricked us into putting them on ourselves and our neighbors. A happy slave is a more productive slave. The reason Marxism will never work is because it uses the negation of ownership as it’s principle; possession. The reason why capitalism does and forever will work is because it uses ownership as it’s principle. It’s time for us to abandon the middle, just like Marxism all of the lite flavors of it will also not work. It is false.

I’ll tell you the reason I do not feel the need to have to explain how freedom might work. Look back at the last couple of hundred years. Look at the explosion in technology. Look at the advances in the medical field. Look at the marvels taking place in the computing world. My goodness, look at the Internet itself. Everywhere we look we see human genius at work. This boom started to happen right around the same time chattel slavery was abolished in many countries. Do you think this is a coincidence? When men could no longer own other humans, and force those humans to labor, they had to come up with alternatives. Necessity is the mother of invention, and when you own slaves, there is no need for invention or innovation. This is the reason why I consider myself a 21st century abolitionist, I only have to look to the recent past to know that the abolition of slavery leads to amazing things. This is why I do not spend time explaining freedom, I spend my time explaining slavery. Along with being an abolitionist, I am also a capitalist. I have been fond of saying, “I have my ideas, but they are mine.” If you need some advise on how to live your life without the use of slaves, I’ll start a business called the “Freedom Consulting Firm”, and then you can pay me for my ideas.

When my son was very young, he would grab his toys from his cousins and say “MINE!”, we can grasp these concepts at a very young age. It’s time for us to look at the state and simply say, “MINE!”

“The labourers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only have to stop labour, regard the product of labour as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labour disturbances which show themselves here and there. The State rests on the – slavery of labour. If labour becomes free. the State is lost.”
~Max Stirner

Yet, clever people fall for far more dangerous ideas of the exact same form. In Philadelphia, a group of remarkably intelligent men came together to form a government. These men had seen full-grown governments before, had in fact just freed themselves from one. Yet here they were, feeding and nourishing a small baby government, playing with it, considering it so cute and adorable that they just had to have one.

My previous piece was an attempt at a polite hatchet job on the OWS movement. That was hypocritical and wrong. I apologize, more to my friends who read it and agreed than to the OWS types who (like the rest of the world) remain largely unaware of the existence of ZeroGov.

I stand by my criticism of the unfocused nature of the protests. I agree with the sentiment of frequent ZeroGov commenter mot, who wrote:

““They ask evil to protect them from evil….” That’s the old Biblical example of trying to cast out Beelzebub in the name of Beelzebub. It simply doesn’t happen.”

And I still oppose the sentiment of this young man and those like him who, rather than being upset that the fruits of their labor has been wrongly appropriated by those in power, instead demand a share of the spoils.

But these protests are, so far, spontaneous order without coercion or force (although there are some disturbing omens that the will of the many might soon be imposed on the few). Until force is used, until laws are imposed and enforced, these protesters are absolutely doing the right thing. The protesters are respectfully using and maintaining the “occupied” property. This is anarchism in action by any reasonable definition: that no person or group imposes its will on another.

I am still worried that OWS, like the Tea Party before it, will be co-opted by new or existing powers. I do not like the rumblings of a coherent demand for increased regulation instead of the removal of existing Protectionist, Corporatist and Crony Capitalist government policies. I do not like the near-complete absence of anti-war sentiment among the protesters on the Youtube videos and articles I’ve seen.

But popular anger at a system of power that has done harm, I like. Spontaneous order and cooperation without coercion, I like. And so I hope and pray that this movement does not coalesce into Soviet communism, Nazi fascism, or American imperialism. I hope that anger at the powers that be, anger at the tax collectors and Apparatchiks and banksters does not devolve into a cult of personality around the elites who make false promises.

Publisher’s Note: It is now less than a week to Libertopia in San Diego, Kalifornia. I will be speaking on FRI and SAT and I will be on a panel on SUN. It would be wonderful if some of my readers showed up. You can register here: http://libertopia.org/ -BB

“The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.”– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Occupy Wall Street is about conformity and compliance. The males (not men) and women that people the protests are consistently collectivists and apologists for state violence with heads expensively filled by overpriced universities with the most economically illiterate and toxic nonsense a state-dominated college education system could produce. Just as fashion is not about individual tastes but mass appeal, the protests are about the Free Stuff Army much as the antiwar protests dwindled to near zero with the end of the draft, the same applies here. As soon as these scholars-in-hock get loan forgiveness for their easily earned degrees, the cries for social justice will diminish except for the professional protestors and the true believers of collectivism whose life mission is to enslave humanity in an even more effective slave state than we have built so far in America. Where did these protestors come from?

The New left was at an intellectual crossroads in the 1960s. The fork in the road would either embrace totalitarian collectivism or anarchistic individualism and they chose the former in droves. In a world dominated by bipolar military industrial complexes in both the US and the other USSR at the time, communism was still seen by the chattering intellectual classes in the West as the only just and righteous organizing principle for societies except for the lone voices like Koestler and Conquest. Up until 1989, the leading introductory textbook on economics penned and edited by Paul Samuelson was still trumpeting the superior efficacy of Communist delivery of goods and services over the free market.

“By the thirteenth edition (1989), Samuelson and Nordhaus declared, “the Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed; a socialist command economy can function and even thrive” (13:837). Samuelson and Nordhaus were not alone in their optimistic views about Soviet central planning; other popular textbooks were also generous in their descriptions of economic life under communism prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Today, the third generation of this totalitarian temptation has taken the form of fashionable collectivists shambling about their camp-hives on Wall Street and the satellite protests scattered across the nation. Adam Kokesh has provided a brilliant snapshot video record of the sheer inanity and clouded thinking of the moron-a-thon known as Occupy Wall Street but strip it of all the florid protestations and mewling about “fair share” and “distribution” and it comes down to one single operative principle: a monopoly on the threat and use of force must be employed to bring order and justice to human conclaves.

I find it very creepy and disturbing to watch several of the videos where the protesters are gathered in training sessions repeating behavior constraints on how to protest and deal with the police. Not adults briefing up other folks on rules of conduct, but the noxious Jesse Jackson-style nursery rhyme cadence of repeat after me. You can even look at this video of a Young Communist League contingent in Chicago to discover where the Occupy protestors got their cute little “United “riff they employ. I suspect that one reason communism/socialism is seeing a new resurgence may be the junction of willful ignorance through electronic addiction (tethering to information devices) and the wonderful attraction of collectivism by relieving the advocate of all personal responsibility to provide for neighbors through voluntary effort. Under the umbrella of collectivism, these are nothing more than more codified versions of violent tax and resource farming.

The protestors show a very conflicted relationship with the police. They seem frightened and cowed by them yet the police and the protestors share the same common goal: increased concentration and use of violence to guide human behavior to fit the mold of the new homo Sovieticus the protesters desire.

“One of his most important insights is that the “negative selection”, including various types of visibly oppressive treatment of those whose thinking doesn’t fit the “party line” leads to development of “acquired helplessness syndrome”[17]

This phenomenon explains the traits characteristic of many ex-Soviet citizens: shyness, passivity, excessive trust – and need – of government, belief that one cannot really control his fate without a “guiding hand”.

According to Kon, “The lack of individual responsibility is a product of decades of living under limited freedom. People get used to oppression. This has always happened with totalitarian regimes. I remember, I was greatly surprised to meet people with a similar mentality in East Germany, a country that has always been very different from Russia. This happened during the unification of the East and West Germany. I saw fright in the eyes of the East Germans, the same reaction as I see here in Russia – people do not know what to do. There is a psychological term for this – the acquired helplessness syndrome. The syndrome is usually manifested in social pessimism and lack of self-confidence. The acquired helplessness syndrome is the main feature of Soviet mentality and unfortunately it is prevalent among senior citizens.”

Wilhelm Reich went on to posit the psychology of fascism in a similar vein.

The police have been surprisingly restrained in their use of violence toward the protestors even though protest in the US today is closer to a permission slip to speak loudly than the raucous imbroglios of the past. Even the Tea Party went so far as to seek permission to put tea in the Mirror Pool proximate to the memorial to one of the most savage presidents in US history, Lincoln. A man who kidnapped and jailed tens of thousands of antiwar protestors. Some have even posited that these protests are carefully orchestrated media events to distract the dwindling consumers of the dinosaur media from the real problems in America. The useful idiot ranks are swelled by the critical thinking-handicapped wards of the university system who graduate and find themselves in a world more real than the Ivory Tower gulags that fill their heads with fever-dreams of gun-run utopias (as long as the guns are not in private hands, oh my).

One would be hard pressed to find a collectivist protestor who is not carrying rhetorical water for the advocacy of maximum government. In this version of America, Wall Street is indeed a wholly owned regulatory subsidiary of the Federal government that can’t make a trade for a dollar without Federal oversight and permission. The one percent isn’t the rich; they are the government nomenklatura that runs the feed lot called America. These protestors for the most part are merely more vocal cows seeking greater subsidy at the feeding trough. They consider private property the real enemy which means they are gunning for anyone who desires freedom and liberty. Get ready.

The police and the protestors have one thing in common: they both have a pathological hatred of individual volition, free markets and free moral agency. The former represent the very concrete realization of the utopian ideal the latter wish for.

I hope they get it good and hard.

Resist.

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”
-Karl Marx

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

-H. L. Mencken

In the etymological sense, all societies are democracies. No government could remain in power, even with the support of the police and the military, if every citizen were simply to pick up a rock and throw it. Therefore, any government which remains in power has the tacit consent of the people, or at least a plurality of motivated people.

It seems that the American government is losing this tacit consent. The Occupy Wall Street protests and the copycat movements across the country are evidence of that. These protesters are not a majority of the people. They are not a plurality of the people. They do, however, represent one majority opinion: that the nature of the present relationship between government and high finance is intolerable, and must be changed.

The rest of the protesters’ message is unclear, because it is unfocused. Polling would indicate that the protesters want more government regulation, but determining the nature of that regulation would be left to existing powers – leaving us exactly where we are now, albeit with shiny new lipstick on our pig of a financial system. And what of the wars, against “terrorism” and “drugs?” Have those been forgotten, or are the prison-industrial and military-industrial complexes simply a smaller threat to our well being than the undefined greed of the “1%”?

The Occupy Wall Street movement is composed of people who have every reason to be angry. Their property has been appropriated, their opportunities are repeatedly limited by government interference. They’ve been sold a package of unjust wars, useless education, and dubious protection from threats less real than the Bogeyman. To be sure, crony corporatists and congressman have colluded to commandeer the future of this country, and of the entire world. But OWS doesn’t seem to be about that. OWS asks for more regulation, more government meddling in our affairs. They ask evil to protect them from evil, and don’t understand the similarity between the 1% of high finance and the 1% of government.

Mencken’s snide dismissal of democracy is too kind. These common people, these “99%,” don’t really know exactly what they want. Unfortunately, the getting will be just as “good and hard” regardless.

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Whenever speaking of free and voluntary societies I’m often asked, “What would we do about this”, or, “who would take care of that.” I used to rattle off answers to these questions that were supplied by minds sharper than mine without even examining the questions. Then I realized I was focusing on the wrong part of the question. I was simply explaining how a different system would work, and hoping the ones asking the question would be won over with the clever and well thought out answers I had either memorized, or thought of myself. I have been trying to persuade people away from their system using the promise of a new and improved system. I realized I was no different than any other philosophical political peddler, and I would no longer tempt people with “our system.”

The truth is no one knows what “we” will do in a completely voluntary society, there is just no way of knowing. Any answer that is given to questions pertaining to the problems that individuals would face in such a society are purely speculation. I cannot tell you what we would do, I can only tell you what I would do. I would honor my contracts; I would defend myself; I would choose to help others in need; I would expect no one to support me; and I would plan accordingly. I want to be very clear here, I do not disagree with the theory that is being presented on how the logistics of society would be handled. There is no doubt that these organizations and such would arise and be needed in a voluntary society. I disagree with the fact that these theories are being pushed as answers before addressing the only real and true problem; collectivist thought. When those who are curious about voluntarism ask the “we” questions, the underlying collectivist philosophy is still there, and this is what needs to be addressed first before any practical questions can or should be answered. Otherwise, you are just trying to get them to abandon their system for your system.

I’ll admit that getting people to see the gun in the room is a very important and crucial step when trying to win them over, but that is not enough. In my experience, after I have been successful at pointing out the systematized coercion, and institutionalized violence in the current system, the conversation always turns to how we would deal with the practical issues. This is where I would start to explain how we would handle these things, but lately I have been pointing out the “we” in the room. In a revolution of the individual, “we” questions should not be answered. Put the ball back in their court. Ask them what they would do. When human interaction is purely voluntary, there can be no system. It is important to let the ones asking the questions find their own solutions, or what they think might be solutions. I have at 32 years old, accepted that I am probably as free now as I will ever be. I know there is one crucial step that has to be taken before humans are physically free, and that step is to be mentally free. If it will be their decision in a voluntary society, it must be their decision now. I must say, watching my fellow humans squirm when asked to think like a free people is a little disheartening. There is a long road ahead, my only hope is that my children will be the pioneers of this new society.

I have been able to uncover a couple of fears that hold the human mind back from being able to grasp and accept the idea of a free society. One big issue is justice. Again, it comes back to, “what will we do about the criminals?” This is where I say, “I don’t know.” I have my ideas, but they are mine. I don’t know what neighbors will do when an intruder breaks into their houses, I don’t know what the family will do to the rapist who is caught. I don’t know what will happen to the murderer. This is usually where I start to lose those who I have been able to entertain this far into the conversation, you know, the ones who have not walked off and called me insane yet. Humans will know when a crime has been committed regardless of what society they live in. The American Justice system has set objective standards such as; murder is wrong; rape is wrong; and theft is wrong. These standards were not set by the government, they were set by the human mind. We are able to recognize wrong doings; entering into a free society will not change this. Just as punishments are subjective now, they will also be subjective in a free society. The map does not match the territory, and that is fine. This is part of the human experience, and it’s the reason why we have judges and juries now.

The fear of criminals is still rooted in collectivist thought. The fear of the other guy, makes us turn to the other guy. How many criminals are really out there? I’d say about 1% of the human population are actually psychopaths, and capable of real horror. Does this mean we should create an incubator for more psychopaths known as the state? We make more criminals out of our fear of criminals. Fear makes humans do very unreasonable things like give psychopaths a place to be pardoned of all responsibility for their actions. The fact is, bad people will continue to do bad things regardless of the society we choose to live in. They will still have to be dealt with, and I have no doubt they will be. Good humans will not sit idly by and watch as crimes are committed against their neighbors. This will especially be true when there is no state agency claiming to protect us. We will have to take our safety a little more seriously, and personally. Of course that should be the focus now, but the state has either outlawed your personal protection, or removed it from your decision all together. Either way both are false. To my way of thinking, we pull some ticks off of this dog and keep hunting. We will deal with the blood suckers as they come, it’s really all we can do.

In closing, freedom has no system, and it never will. Billions of humans making trillions of decisions could never be harnessed or thoroughly theorized by even the most brilliant voluntaryist thinkers or free market economists. I try not to use the term, “free market system” anymore, because humans trading goods and services is not a system, it’s what humans do. I have abandoned the use of the word “system” completely. Of course, some of the more logical folks out there might say that having no system is a system. Well, for those of you who would say that and discard this whole essay, I would ask you this….

Is there a difference between those who seek to build a system, and those who only seek to build?

“Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.”~ Mikhail Bakunin

“Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”

– Thomas Paine

To perversely paraphrase Bastiat: “The state is the great fiction within whose tax jurisdiction it deems itself free to fine, kidnap, cage, maim and kill its taxpayers and tax clients.” It tends to be more gentle with the latter than the former.

High Tax Commissioner Obama recently ordered the robot murder of two acknowledged American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, in yet another undeclared hostility zone in the Middle East in Yemen. No trial and no appeal, simply the remote control killing of two Americans in a foreign country. No empire in history has ever isolated its more obnoxious and deadly behavior in foreign lands simply to the latest imperial conquest, all the countries have eventually brought it all back to their homelands like disease vectors. Wait for it because all the bloodshed and dismemberment we have visited on the rest of humanity will be brought home and used with vigor and no restraint whatsoever as the powers that be emanating from Mordor on the Potomac become more and more desperate as their economic ignorance and chicanery force their hand at increased savagery to preserve their way of life. The United Kingdom shows what will happen to a nation that seeks to rule the world, is reduced to colonial rock formations dotted around the globe and starts to practice empire on its own citizens.

We are all used to news coming over the transom everyday of yet more innocent women and children maimed and killed by our troops or their proxies in the multitude of statist squabbles around the globe. We are bludgeoned day after day with the news of cops misbehaving violently across the fruited plain. The prisons are bloated with the largest per capita population on Earth in the land of the free. Millions of tax dollars are spent in a death penalty system that morbidly worships a premeditated killing of a human being accused of a capital crime.

When stripped of the gaudy music and patriotic bunting, nation states are simply tax jurisdictions whose primary purpose is the forced redistribution of wealth and privilege. We are vampire nation quite literally as tens of millions of hapless subjects are drained of the proceeds of their labor and investment for no better reason than a lack of recourse to say no to the mugger. The wealth is expropriated through taxes, regulations and work rules that choke efficiency and effectiveness at every turn. The rough analog is the Helot relationship to the Spartan ruling class. You work and follow the rules you did not sign up for in a system rigged to ensure that your compliance is ultimately on pain of death if not followed to the letter. In other words, government promises security in exchange for a disproportionate share of your time and efforts. Slavery is alive and well in America, it is simply of a more ephemeral variety. One is convinced that even though you are not owned directly by a master, your taxing and tithing is necessary to sustain your freedom in exchange for all the good things provided by government. Your non-compliance with any of these diktats from the nomenklatura will result in the aforementioned fining, kidnapping, caging, maiming and killing (one can call this the ladder of slave resistance penalties) depending on the severity of the claim and the resistance of the citizen-slave being taken to task.

In the past, I have often been accused of oversimplification when I point out that the institution and existence of policeforces is the one essential element to yoke large herds of humanity to statist plunder. Absent their activities, the politicians would have no means whatsoever to enforce their rapine and murderous ways. None. So let’s peel the onion and examine one of the sustaining beliefs that inform the very essence of police power: the ability of the state to initiate violence. There are reams of busy jurisprudence that speak to the very right of the state to injure and kill its citizens. In order to have the peaceful society that the government insists is its plot and raison d’être, it must have the power to kill. Not only the power for its enforcers to protect themselves but the power to initiate violence; if there were a contract, it would not be one you would sign except under duress (there is a pattern here). The contract would read: you have the right to do what we tell you and if you resist or fail to comply, you are ultimately subject to death at the hands of our enforcers. Period. If said enforcers murder you, they will be subject to investigation by themselves and will most likely go on to enforce more “contracts”. No matter how petty the crime nor how malum prohibitum the offense, the state has invested itself with the power to kill. It has no choice, for who would willingly surrender without threat of violence nearly sixty percent of their income, allow their family members to be sexually assaulted, or not eat foods the government does not approve of?

The only way a state can sustain itself is to employ the necessary apparatchiks who will do the most heinous acts of violence against their fellow citizens and to codify the willingness to initiate aggression and in the end, maim or kill anyone who resists or refuse to comply. Even if that person is an unarmed homeless man who is 130 pounds dripping wet.

The government is barbarism and not civilization. Much like the moral amnesia that allowed slavery to thrive for five millennia, mankind has been hoodwinked, cajoled and coerced into thinking the state is the only way to organize society and any other notion makes you an outlaw. How many times have you ever questioned the veracity of a law in polite conversation only to hear that must be the way of the world and there is no other method?

There is no greater moral government than a man’s self-ownership and there is no greater injustice than denying that very thing to a man .

Resist.

“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”